Fact check: guns in America

Alan Yuhas

Trump: “We will have a second amendment that is a very small replica of what it is now” in a Clinton administration

Trump is being reductive: Clinton has never called for abolishing the second amendment, the right to bear arms, though she does support gun control measures such as an assault weapons ban, increased background checks and greater liability for manufacturers.

As moderator Chris Wallace noted, Clinton has said she disagrees with the supreme court’s 5-4 decision in 2008 to broadly affirm the personal right to gun ownership. Her campaign has said Clinton would prefer states have the right to enact as strict gun control laws as they see fit.

Clinton: “We have 33,000 people a year who die from guns”

Clinton is broadly correct. The Centers for Disease Control reported 33,636 firearm deaths in 2013, and similar figures in the years preceding it.

Trump: Chicago has the toughest gun laws and the most gun deaths

Chicago police have pushed back on the notion that the city’s gun laws have proven ineffective, noting that a huge number of gun seizures were of firearms purchased outside the city or outside Illinois, where laws are more lax. Trump is largely correct about Chicago’s homicide problem: the city is on pace to have more than 600 gun deaths in 2016.

Wallace goes further into the details of abortion policy. Clinton is right there with him. How far should abortion protections extend. She says that Roe v Wade takes into account the health of a mother, which she says often applies in late-term pregnancies where abortion is a possibility.

“I do not think the United States government should be stepping in in those most personal of decisions.”